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olive taught herself the entire alphabet playing endless abc. we did nothing on our part sadly.

DS started recognizing/"reading" letters and numbers a couple months back at 24/25 months. Even though he still doesn't say the whole alphabet consistently. Random uppercase letters and almost all numbers. We haven't done anything out of the norm aside from books and magnets and puzzles. We point the number signs out at one mall near us that has oversized ones for each section of the mall.

M is 25 months and has been able to recognize most letters for some months now. We have alphabet blocks and some alphabet books that we read through and I have her tell me the letters. She doesn't have as many numbers though.

Evan learned his ABCs pretty early (18isj months?) He was (is) obsessed with letters, stemming from Dr Suess's ABCs, and encouraged it with fridge magnets and foam bath letters.

We started by repeatedly pointing to letters (or responding to his point) and telling him their name. Eventually he just started telling us what it was.

We started numbers when he started to walk up and down stairs holding our hands. We'd count each step as we went up and down, because it was his favorite thing ever for a while. He can currently count to 20, but 15-20 is still kinda muddy.

And Endless Alphabet/Reader is awesome. Probably our most used app.

DD is obsessed with the show "Super Why". I think it's on PBS but it's free on Netflix. Since she's been on this kick she's definitely picked up more letters.

@regberadaisy: I just started letters with my 18 month old a couple weeks ago--by "started" I just mean started pointing them out and pronouncing and so far she can point out A-G and O and M consistently if I ask her, like "where is the O" she will find it on a page with all the letters.

She only verbalizes them if I say them first though. And we are working on the abc song, but she starts singing gibberish after just a, b, and c because the pace is fast.

I think she'll know them all by 2 though.

She can also draw an O (or a ball, whichever I ask) although it's a pretty flat circle.

Ooh also check out storybots. Super fun videos!

She is starting to now at 23 months. Day care is working on them recognizing their names and she can spell it with some help.

@Mrs. Sunshine: definitely! I think they make a numbers one too, and then Endless Reader! Great, fun, educational apps!

@erinpye: I totally meant to add to the end of that/ask...is it free? lol

My LO learned her ABCs by playing with an alphabet puzzle. Highly recommend those!

DS is obsessed with singing abc's. He can get to F and then mumbles and might say a couple more letters. He has a wooden alphabet puzzle he loves and knows W. He calls a couple other letters by words. Eg P he calls papa.

He is 22 months.

Super Why is a big help, add is the spelling and wiped match apps mentioned above (endless alphabet, also letter school) but the biggest thing that helped was a Melissa & Doug alphabet puzzle and some random $1 Target alphabet flash cards.

Every kid has their strengths- mine is obsessed with alphabet and numbers, but he's not so great at conversation. We have to work pretty hard at that!

@regberadaisy: she had the m&d magnets. They stuck to our old fridge pretty well. I can't remember how she started recognizing numbers. I think it was through number concept books. Can she count? It was easy for her to recognize numbers because she could count. And of course, endless numbers is great!

My son learned from Sesame Street and his alphabet books. He is mostly self taught as well. I think some kids just gravitate towards letters and numbers. We also had a fun free alphabet app that he loved.

I've spent a ton of time pinning alphabet activities and strategies for toddlers. Suggestions I've seen:

* Start with the letters in your child's name
* Do a few letters each week -- don't spend a whole week on the same letters
* You don't need to go in order with letters, but when you choose a group to teach, pick ones that don't look alike (like b and d would be bad to teach the same week)
* Teach both the letter name and the letter sound

DS is 26 months and knows four or five letters, and a few of their sounds. He can mostly count to ten on his own.

My approach has been close to what Mrs. Cowboy wrote about here: http://www.hellobee.com/2012/07/19/cultivating-young-readers-genuine-opportunities-to-read-and-write/

I wouldn't worry about comparing what your child knows to what other children know at this point. At your daughter's age, I focused on reading aloud a lot and from a wide variety of books on the theory that a big vocabulary would serve LO better in the long run (because you have to know the meaning of the word you're sounding out to really make sense of a text and you learn meaning through context...therefore you need a ton of context). I continue to do basic text awareness by having LO show me where I should start reading on the page and showing him things like punctuation in the text. We slowly (emphasis on slowly) added in letter sounds and names starting around age 3. We've recently started letter formation with an actual pencil at age 4. We mostly did finger writing in sand/salt until this point.

I don't think you need to make sure a child has mastered a letter or number before introducing the next one. LO often claimed to "not know" letters that he'd previously demonstrated that he did know, so if I'd insisted on perfect mastery before moving on, we wouldn't have gotten very far.

As for materials, we mostly write things down and use some basic manipulatives. I like the magnetic numbers and letters (probably better than LO!), and for objects to count, anything that you have multiples of that are similar--blocks, etc.--is fine.

@Mrs Green Grass: LOVE storybots!